


they look so pretty when they bleed

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Blood Loss, Gen, Hank and Rosalee and Juliette and Renard are there too but not much, Hurt/Comfort, Stabbing, Trail of Blood, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: whumptober day 10 - prompt: blood loss, trail of blood. nick gets stabbed and decides not to do the rational thing and call 911. luckily monroe stops by.
Relationships: Nick Burkhardt & Monroe
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	they look so pretty when they bleed

**Author's Note:**

> heya!!! i was originally not gonna do grimm for today's prompt but then i had an Idea and simply Had To Write It. i hope i'm not getting too repetitive with this but i just really love to beat nick up lmao. anyway this was my first time writing monroe, so i hope his voice is ok and everything!! hope you enjoy!

Nick’s list of things to do today had been pretty simple: wake up, go for a jog, take a shower, give Juliette a call and see how she was doing at her friend’s engagement party in Seattle, get to work. It had most definitely  _ not  _ included getting stabbed.

But there he was, standing on the sidewalk, not another pedestrian in sight, a hand clamped firmly across his torso and a bloody knife at his feet. 

He knew what he  _ should  _ have done. He  _ should  _ have grabbed his phone and called 911, like any reasonable person would. But the knife hadn’t gone that deep - his attacker had plunged it maybe a third of the way into his body before they had apparently regretted their decision. They’d pulled the knife out, dropped it on the ground, and ran away. And Nick hadn’t chased them down, hadn’t even gotten a look at their face. 

What he  _ could  _ do, then, to make up for his failing at that extremely basic task of observation that he was supposed to be so good at, was collect the evidence, fix himself up, and get into work to report a crime. That seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan.

It wasn’t, of course. The second he bent to pick up the knife, it felt as though all of the adrenaline in his body wore off at once. His torso exploded into a symphony of pain, and he collapsed to his knees, pressing his hand harder still into his skin, more in an attempt to stop the pain than to stop the bleeding. Then, he forced his other hand to grab the knife, and promptly dropped it when the hand started to shake. 

He gritted his teeth and once again forced his hand to cooperate, this time gripping the knife so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He took a deep breath, then used that same hand to push himself back to his feet.

Somehow, he managed to remain standing, fighting through a wave of intense dizziness and willing his eyes to focus. He started to walk back towards his house. 

It took him far longer than it should have, but eventually, Nick made it. He’d almost collapsed more times than he could remember, his wound had throbbed with every single step, his hand and shirt were slick with blood, and he could barely remember what it was he was supposed to be doing. He had managed to hold on to the knife, but he dropped it onto the doormat so he could let himself inside. 

As soon as he closed the door, Nick leaned back against it. He knew he needed to be doing something, fixing this, but he was  _ so tired, _ and a quick rest wouldn’t hurt, would it? 

_ No, it wouldn’t, _ he decided, and slid to the floor.

\--

Monroe had woken up earlier than normal that morning. He’d made a batch of muffins for himself and Rosalee, and they’d enjoyed them over coffee, discussing the new clock Monroe had just been commissioned to repair, and a shipment that the spice shop was expecting. 

When Rosalee had left for work, Monroe had decided he ought to bring a few of the leftover muffins to Nick, seeing as he was home alone for a couple days and might have wanted some company over breakfast.

He parked his car across the street from Nick’s house and opened his door, the container of muffins in his hands. 

The second he’d stepped onto the sidewalk, the container dropped to the ground, sending muffins flying. The smell of blood -  _ Nick’s _ blood - was overwhelming, and Monroe looked around himself, hoping that he hadn’t somehow hit Nick with his car. 

Which he hadn’t, of course. But  _ something  _ had hit Nick, a fact which was confirmed when he crossed the street, seeing splotches of blood along the sidewalk leading up to Nick’s front porch.

He hurried up the steps, grimly noting the trail of blood which preceded him. He stopped short at the doormat, seeing a bloody knife lying there.  _ At least I know what happened, _ he thought, and tried the door. 

It was unlocked, but didn’t want to move. As soon as Monroe realized why this must have been, he heard Nick groan from the other side.  _ He’s alive,  _ Monroe thought,  _ that’s good.  _

He pushed the door open as gently as he could, certain that Nick was in no state to move himself. He stepped inside, cringing as the scent of blood enveloped him completely. This was  _ so  _ not good…

\--

Nick opened his eyes as he felt his body move. He heard someone step inside and shut the door behind them.

“Who’s there,” he breathed, too tired to actually speak the words.

_ “Dude…”  _ he heard Monroe say, somewhere out of sight. “What happened?”

Nick tried to respond, but his prior question had used up all the breath he seemed to have had, and he just made a sort of wheezing sound instead.

“No, no, I  _ know  _ what happened, you got stabbed, right? The knife on the doormat? I gotta do something...why are you even here? Shouldn’t you have, like, called 911 or something? Shouldn’t  _ I  _ call 911?”

He  _ should  _ have called 911. But...he hadn’t? “Why?” he managed to ask, and then he coughed, and his chest felt like it was tearing open and he tasted blood in his mouth. 

“Why should I call 911? Because you were  _ stabbed, _ Nick! I don’t....you’re a police officer! Why didn’t  _ you  _ call 911?”

Nick had been too out of it to actually process what Monroe had been saying to him, but he sounded irritated. Angry, maybe. He didn’t want Monroe to be angry at him, but he didn’t know how to fix it, since he didn’t know what Monroe had said.

“Sorry,” he whispered, figuring that was the best he could do. He felt something wet drip down his face and wondered if he was bleeding from his eyes, too. Why not? Every  _ other  _ part of himself seemed to be bloody. He could feel the blood drying on his hand, which had long since slipped to the floor, uncovering his wound. He felt it soaking into his clothes, and oozing from his torso, a horrible mix of cold and warm that was making him simultaneously sweaty and shivery. 

“Hey, no, don’t be sorry, it’s okay,” Monroe said, and he crouched down, bringing his face into Nick’s field of vision for the first time. He was blurry and wobbly, but even through that Nick could sense how worried he was. Which was bad, worry was bad, bleeding like this was bad, oh, god, this was all really,  _ really  _ bad. Like,  _ he was going to die _ bad. 

He reached out his hand, looking for Monroe, but he was too far away, and talking, but not to him. Nick tried to remember what Monroe had said to him earlier, back when he’d been listening, but found he couldn’t.  _ Maybe it’s Rosalee,  _ he thought. Rosalee would know how to help…

And suddenly, Monroe was back in front of him, and then he was pushing something into Nick’s wound, and it hurt so,  _ so  _ badly, and brought a wave of dizziness with it, and Nick once again reached out a desperate hand, this time succeeding in touching Monroe, smearing blood across his face. 

“M’roe…”

“Yeah?”

“Hurts.”

“I know,” Monroe said, and then he was doing something with his arms. It took Nick until he felt something being draped over him to realize he’d been taking off his jacket. “I know it hurts, but this is what they said to do.”

Nick hadn’t understood most of the words that Monroe had just said, but he  _ had  _ felt the warmth of his jacket, and could almost smell, above the overwhelming scent of his own blood, the familiar and comforting smell of  _ Monroe. _ These two things distracted him enough from the pain that he managed to focus his eyes for a few seconds, latching them onto Monroe’s. He should tell him something, if he was dying, if…

But then the world started to darken around the edges, and he felt like he was falling through space, and he only had time to say, “‘M gonna-” before everything went black.

\--

Not a minute later, two paramedics came hurrying inside, quickly moving Monroe out of the way and getting to work. Monroe, meanwhile, did his best to explain the details of the situation, which didn’t extend much beyond, “he was stabbed.” 

He followed them to the ambulance, managing to convince them to let him ride along by insisting that Nick would be freaked out if he woke up in an unfamiliar setting with nobody he knew. 

As the ambulance began driving, Monroe tried not to focus on the ever-present smell of Nick’s blood, of Nick  _ bleeding out, _ so he distracted himself by placing hurried calls to Rosalee, Juliette, and Hank, all of whom promised they would get to the hospital as soon as they could. 

They had nearly reached their destination when Nick woke up, very briefly, very panicked. Monroe gave the nearest paramedic a brief  _ I told you so _ look, and then shifted himself to be sure that Nick could see him. 

“Where...what’s…”

Monroe answered the unfinished questions. “We’re in an ambulance, on the way to the hospital. You passed out there for a little bit, but you’re awake now, so that’s good. Everyone’s going to meet us there - or meet  _ me  _ there, I guess, and you when you wake up from surgery, and…”

Monroe trailed off, realizing that Nick had passed out again. He’d be okay, though. He was tough, and, much as it pained Monroe to think it, had been through...well, maybe  _ worse  _ wasn’t the way to put it, but a hell of a lot of pain, anyway. He’d be fine. 

\--

And he was. Three hours later, Nick woke up, disoriented and confused but in a completely different way than he’d been before. He looked around, not sure what to expect. 

And he  _ definitely  _ wouldn’t have expected the scene that waited for him: Monroe and Hank, sitting in identical plastic hospital chairs, talking about something Nick couldn’t quite hear, stealing glances at him every few seconds. Rosalee, in a slightly more comfortable looking chair, talking to Juliette on the phone and reassuring her that Nick was okay, and would probably be awake when she arrived back in Portland. The Captain, standing off by himself in front of a window, also talking on the phone about something that Nick was pretty sure had to do with him. 

Monroe was the first to notice that he was awake, announcing it to the rest of the room a bit too loudly for Nick’s liking.

“Sorry, man, I’m just - it’s really nice to see you, not that we  _ haven’t  _ been seeing you, but see you awake, I mean. How do you feel? You want some water or anything?”

Nick chose to focus on the shortest part of Monroe’s brief monologue. “I’m okay, I think,” he said, reaching a hand out to experimentally poke at the bandages covering a large part of his torso.

“Don’t do that,” Monroe suggested, as Nick hissed in pain. 

“Good idea,” Nick said, pulling his hand away and blinking tiredly.  _ How am I tired? _ he briefly wondered. He didn’t remember much of his day since he’d woken up, but he was pretty sure he’d been unconscious for quite some time.

“You can go back to sleep, it’s okay,” Monroe said, noting his exhaustion. “You  _ were  _ stabbed, and all. You’re entitled to some rest.”

Nick took a final, somewhat worried, glance around the room, wondering how occupied it would be when he woke up. He almost asked, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Luckily, he didn’t have to - they all seemed to know what he was thinking, a fact which teetered on the line between freaky and touching.

Hank gave him a reassuring smile. Rosalee put a soft hand on his arm and told him that Juliette would be there in half an hour. Renard stayed in his position by the window, but offered up a nod. Monroe spoke the thought they were all trying to convey: “we’ll all still be here when you wake up. Promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading this!!! it was super super fun to write and i hope you enjoyed it! please feel free to let me know what you think!


End file.
